Bathroom reno- what to do first

Any type of home renovation can be overwhelming. Unless you’re a professional in the home makeover field, you probably don’t have a clue where to start. You may even get different answers depending on which professional you ask. The number one rule with any design is to pick your inspiration piece, or the item that will dictate all the colors and tones. With your standard bathroom remodels, this would be your counter top.

Here’s why:

If you are going with a stone slab…

Stone can be very dictative. Granite, marble, quartz and other stones can have very distinct veining or coloring that could differ even slab to slab. You may choose a stone that has a prominent veining that pulls a certain color that you’d like to pull out in tile. On the other hand, it may be a more uniform pattern that calls for a more dramatic tile.

You may have to choose from remnants. Unless you are installing an oversized vanity that will require a whole slab, you will be choosing from remnants. This can limit your choices. Even if you go in with an idea in your head of what you are looking for, you may not be able to get it.

50 shades of grey. The most common colors in counter tops are beige and grey. There are infinite shades of these colors. They are the base colors that can pull any color imaginable. It’s super important to make sure two beiges or two greys coordinate and don’t clash with each other. The book got its name for a reason.

There are many more options for tile than counter tops. Your choices for tile will always be more than your choices for counter tops. For examples, a Carrara has a grey vein in it. The tone can completely differ depending on the slab. We, as a tile showroom, have thousands of grey tiles available, all in different tones. A tile could seem to match perfectly, until you get it home and hold it up to the counter top and it pulls green. In that same tile style, we may carry 3 different shades of grey. Meaning, you can still have the tile style you like with the appropriate color that coordinates with your counter top.

You may fall in love with a stone you weren’t initially dreaming about. You can do all the research you’d like on Pinterest and Houzz. You can walk into the store with every intention of purchasing a piece of Fantasy Brown, then walk by a slab of Fantastic White and fall completely in love. If you’ve already picked out your tile according to Fantasy Brown, all the time and effort spent in the tile showroom (including the salesperson’s) is wasted.